My Beautiful King

Chapter Thirty One Part 1

"You bitch-"

"You don't know anything about me!"

"I'm so sorry. Fuck, just leave, Ashley... I'm so... Fuck. Just fucking go!"

I fiddled incessantly with my elasticised seatbelt, wincing as I let go and it snapped back to lash against my chest. But for some reason, I found myself grappling it again and undergoing the same process for the fourth time. Moving house was making me incredibly jittery and irritable, but no amount of fidgeting was succeeding in calming me down. There was something unnerving about watching your house emptied of all possessions.

And then of course, there was this whole situation with Zayn. Our argument had shaken me up to a new extent, his unexpected words constantly ringing in my ears. Scarily, in three minutes I'd managed to establish more knowledge about Zayn than I had in those whole four months we'd been together. I was getting somewhere. I was really getting somewhere. And then I had struck right into the stubborn wall of a shortage of time.

I suddenly wasn't sure if I wanted to move to London.

The car door clicked open and my mum elegantly slid herself onto the seat in front of me. In the nine o'clock sunlight, her hair almost looked white blonde, heavily complementing her sapphire eyes. I silently watched as she rolled the sleeves of her loose-fitting blouse to her elbows, and rooted around in a car compartment for something to clean her hands. The grooves of my frown cut deeper. I knew my mum loved our house; she'd lived there for the majority of her life... And now she was leaving because she had an idiot screw-up for a daughter. I felt guilt.

She turned around to look at me and I instantly averted my attention to a unravelling yarn of my chunky knit cardigan. My mum had to have hated me at moment; no matter how much of a great mother she was. She'd offered her assistance to me many times before and what had I done? I'd only gone and messed everything up, not only for me, but for my parents too. All because of a boy.

"Are you all buckled up there, sweetheart?" My mum asked quietly, peering at me via the recently adjusted rear window.

"Yes, mum." I responded robotically as I pinched the bridge of my nose. The vehicle reeked of a chemically created new car smell and the mustiness of multiple stacked boxes. It was giving me a serious headache. I decided that I didn't like the smell of moving either.

"Mm," was her response as she craned her neck to ensure I was telling the truth. "Are you sure you've packed everything?"

Well. I had attempted to leave behind a small box in a dark crevice of my bare room, containing a red checked scarf, a chain with a small ticking analogue clock, silver drop earrings and a golden alligator ring. But as I had moved to exit the bedroom, I'd found myself rushing straight back to collect it. I was currently sitting with the box underneath my seat.

"Yes, mum."

"Everything?"

"Yes, mum!"

She sighed and gave me a hopeful gaze. "Well, have you said goodbye to the house? And to the neighbourhood?"

Of course I had. I'd spent a good half an hour of what was meant to be packing-time saying my farewells. To be fair, I had already given my farewells to the house many weeks ago when I had intended to run away. It was a different kind of goodbye this time; way less intimate than it had been on the first occasion. The first occasion when Zayn had been involved. Zayn...

Dismissing my long-winded thoughts, I ruffled my hair habitually and gave my usual half-arse reply.

"Yes, mum."

Mum sighed exasperatedly and continued to slather her hands in cool blue sanitiser. "Honestly," she grumbled to herself. "Drawing a decent answer out of a teenager these days is like drawing blood from a stone."

I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly and stared out of the window. "At least I'm on top of everything when it comes to moving house."

My mother scoffed. "Hardly. I had to pack the majority of your clothes because you were too busy crying on the phone with that Marcus-"

"Marcus and I aren't going to be seeing each other often when I move to London!"

"At the rate you were packing at, we would never have been ready to leave-"

"Alright, alright, Mum-"

"Right, ladies!" My dad interrupted as he suddenly hopped into the driver's seat of the car. "Everything's packed and the van is ready to follow us when we leave. Are we good to go to London?"

"Yes, Dad." My mother and I chorused. We shared a goofy grin.

My dad turned to look at us suspiciously. Saying nothing, he twisted his keys into the ignition and revved out the driveway. We all chanted and sang our goodbyes to the house, tiny tears glittering in my mum's eyes.

Did I feel emotional? Of course, yes. It was always going to be hard to leave such a huge chunk of my memories behind. But the feelings were nothing compared to what I felt when we drove past a relatively large house on a winding road, only a quarter of an hour walk away from ours. The grass of the front garden was overgrown and there was a faint boom of a heavy bassline drifting from a room of the top floor. Zayn's room. Zayn's house.

And as I peered through the car window with my face pressed against the glass, I was confident I could see a chiselled face peeking behind a curtain in the room I knew to be Zayn's. Then just like that, it disappeared.

That's when the tears began to overflow.

I was never going to get the answers to the questions that plagued my mind.